The Man Who Drove the Car

V

THE BASKET IN THE BOUNDARY ROAD

The doctors will tell you sometimes that motoring is good for the nerves; and since so many of them now buy cars, and there's no man like a doctor for looking after his own flesh and blood, I suppose they mean what they say. All the same, I wish I'd had a doctor with me the night I picked up Mabel Bellamy; for if his nerves had stood that and he hadn't given himself quinine and iron for the next two months, why, I'd have paid his fee myself.

You see, it was a rum job from the very beginning of it. I was working for Hook-Nosed Moss at the time, and, being Lent, and half the theatrical ladies of position doing penance down at Monte Carlo, we weren't exactly knocking a hole in the Bank of England—nor, for that matter, even earning our fares to Jerusalem. Moss came down to the garage in the West End gloomier and gloomier every day; and one morning when I saw that he'd pawned his diamond shirt-stud (the same that we called "The Bleriot"), why then, says I, Lal Britten, keep off the Stock Exchange and don't put your last thirty bob in Consols, wherever else you place it.

Now this was the state of things when one morning, early in the month of March last year, we were rung up from a public telephone call in Bayswater, and the covered Napier was ordered for a house in the Richmond Road, Bayswater—a locality with which I was unfamiliar, but which Moss declared must be all right, since the gentleman who lived there knew that we had a Napier car and therefore was in a manner introduced to us. Half an hour later he discovered that Richmond Road was nothing better than a mean street of lodging-houses, and, my word, didn't he reel off his instructions to me like texts out of a copy-book.

"Dot's a shame, Britten," he said, coming round by the bonnet of the car, which I was tuning up for the trip—"I was deceived by the dabe of the street. We must have our modey before they have the goods. Mind that now, you dote drive a mile unless they pay the shinies. Three guideas id your pocket and then you drive 'em. Are you listening, Britten?"

I managed to give him a squirt of oil out of my can—for we do love Moss, and then I told him that Nelson on the quarter-deck of the Victory wasn't more alive to his duties.

"Three guineas cash down and then I drive 'em. Is this a round trip to see the beauties of Surrey, Mr. Moss, or do I return to my little cot after the ball is over? I'd like to know on account of taking my Court suit, if you don't mind."

"Oh," says he, "you're ordered for ded o'clock, so I suppose id's the light fadastic toe, Britten. But mide you get your modey—or I'll stop your salary, sure. Three guideas and what you cad hook for yourself—I shan't touch that, Britten—I dow how to treat my servants well."

I laughed at this, but didn't say too much for fear he should find out that he'd got a patch of oil as big as a football on the back of his beautiful new spring suit, and when he had told me that the party's name was Faulkland Jones and had given me the number of the house, I got on with my work again and soon had the three-year-old Napier running as well as ever she did in all her life. Nor did anything else happen until ten o'clock that night, at which hour precisely I drove her up to the house in the Richmond Road, Bayswater, and sent a small boy to knock at the door.

It was a twopenny-ha'penny shop, and no doubt about it; a two-storied day-before-yesterday lodging-house, with a bow window like a Métallurgique bonnet and a door about as big as the top of your gear-box.

So far as I could see from the road there was only one lamp showing in the place, and that was on the off-side, so to speak, in a little window of a bedroom—but the boy said afterwards that there was a glim in the hall, and he was old enough to have known. Taken altogether, you wouldn't have offered them thirty pounds a year for the lot unless you had been a Rothschild with a cook to pension off—and what such people wanted with a Napier limousine at three guineas the job I really could not have said. This, however, was no business of mine; so I just gave the lad a penny and settled myself down in my seat until the Duchess in the apron should appear.

It wasn't a long time I had to wait, perhaps five minutes, perhaps ten. I told the police, when they questioned me afterwards, to split the difference, for none but a policeman could have told you what it had got to do with my story. When the door did open at last, a couple of men carrying a basket came down the bit of a garden, and the first of them wished me "Good evening" very civilly. Then they let the basket down softly on to the pavement and began to talk to me about it.

"How strong's your roof?" asked the first, speaking with a nasal twang I couldn't quite place. "Will it take this bit of a basket all right?"

"Why," says I, "it might depend on what you've got inside that same. Have I come for the washing, or do I drive your plate to the Bank of England?"

The second, the taller man of the two, laughed at this; but the first seemed very uneasy, and it was not lost upon me that he glanced to the right and the left of him as though afraid that someone would come up and hear what his friend had to say next.

"I guess it's neither one nor the other," the first speaker went on. "We're playing theatricals at the Hampstead Town Hall to-morrow night, and these are the dresses. We want you to take them up to the Boundary Road, St. John's Wood—I'll show you the house when we get there; but it's called Bredfield, and you'll know it by a square-toed lamp up against the side-track. Perhaps you can give us a hand with the baggage—and say, have you any objection to gold when you can't get silver?"

He passed up a sovereign and I put it inside my glove. Moss had told me to collect the shekels before I drove them a mile, and so I told the pair of them as I was getting down the luggage ladder, which fortunately I had brought, not knowing the job. A bit to my surprise they paid up immediately, but I made no remark about that; and when I had signed the receipt by the light of my near-side lamp, I helped them up with the basket and soon had it strapped to the rails in a way that satisfied even the nervous little man with the saucer eyes.

Many have asked me if I had no suspicions about that basket, was not curious as to its contents, and remarked nothing as we hoisted it up. To these I say that the men themselves were the chief actors in the business; that they lifted the baggage from the pavement, and that my task was chiefly to guide it to the rails and to make it fast when I had got it there. Otherwise, this basket was no different from any dress-basket you may see upon half a dozen four-wheelers the first time you look in at a railway station; and I should be telling an untruth if I said that I thought about it at all. Indeed, it was not until we got to the Boundary Road, and I stopped at the house called Bredfield, that so much as a notion of anything wrong entered my head. There, however, I did get a shock, and no mistake; for no sooner had I pulled up than I discovered that I had come on alone, and that neither the big man with the Yankee accent nor the little man with the saucer eyes had deigned to accompany me.

Well, I got down from the driver's seat, opened and shut the door as though to be sure that neither the one nor the other was hiding under the seat, and then I rang loudly at the front door bell and waited to see what fortune had got in her lucky-bag.

Had the men told me plainly that I was to go alone, I should never have given the matter a second thought; but I could have sworn that the pair of them were inside the limousine when I started away from the Richmond Road, and how or where they got down I knew no more than the Lord Chancellor. It remained to be seen if the people in the house were any wiser; and you may be sure that I was curious enough by this time, and, if the truth must be told, not a little frightened.

Boundary Road, as many will know, is a quiet thoroughfare in St. John's Wood, most of the houses being detached, and many of them having twenty feet of garden back and front. This particular house was larger than ordinary, and owned an odd iron lamp fixed above the garden gate and conspicuous a hundred yards away. Unlike the shanty in the Richmond Road, nearly every window showed a bright light; and I don't suppose I had waited twenty seconds, though they seemed like a quarter of an hour, when the front door flew open and one of the prettiest parlourmaids I have ever clapped eyes upon came running down the path, and asked, even before she had opened the gate, if the lady had arrived.

"Why," says I, quickly enough, "that she certainly has not, being took to dine with the Grand Duke Isaac at the Metropolitan Music Hall. But her dresses are here, miss, and if you like to try on any of 'em before she arrives, why, you're welcome so far as I am concerned."

She laughed at this and came out on to the pavement. I have said she was pretty, but that's hardly the word for it. If she went on the Gaiety stage to-morrow, she'd be the talk of the town in a fortnight—and as for her manners, well, it isn't my place to remark on those. Affability appeals to me wherever I find it, and if Betsy Chambers isn't affable, then I don't know the meaning of the term.

"Where have you come from?" she asked me as we stood there; "have you come from Scotland?"

"More like from Scotland Yard in these times," says I; "why should you ask me that?"

"Because the gentleman said that his wife would be arriving from Scotland to-night, but that he would not be here until to-morrow. I wouldn't have stopped in the house for anything if he had not said she was coming!"

"Then you're alone, my dear?"

She tossed her head.

"Yes, I am, and that's why all the lamps are lighted."

"Why, to be sure," cried I, "there might have been a man under the bed;" but she was too polite to notice this, and I could see she was very much afraid of sleeping alone in that strange house, and I don't wonder at it.

"I can walk up and down the front garden all night, if you like," said I, "or maybe I could sleep on the drawing-room sofa, if you prefer it. Is this the first time they have left you alone here?"

She looked at me in surprise.

"I was only engaged yesterday from the registry office in Marylebone. This is a furnished house, and they have taken it for three months certain. The gentleman comes from Edinburgh and the lady is an American. They haven't got a cook yet, but hope to have one by to-morrow. Whatever shall I do if they never come at all?"

"Oh," says I, "try on her dresses and see how they suit you. Suppose we get the basket in to begin with. Here's a chap coming who looks as though he could lay out sixpence if he hadn't got a shilling; we'll enlist him and then talk about supper afterwards. Is your name Susan, by the way? The last nice girl I met was called Susan, and so I thought——"

"Oh, don't be silly," says she; "my name's Betsy, and if you squeeze my hand like that, some one will see you."

I told her it must have been done in a moment of abstraction, and then I hailed the "cab runner" who was loafing down the road; and, what with him and a messenger boy in a hurry, we got the basket down and lifted it into a big square hall and laid it almost at the foot of the staircase, up which we should have to carry it presently.

Somehow or other it seemed to me over-heavy for a clothes' basket; but I said nothing about it at the time, and, telling Betsy I would return in a minute, I went back to my car to turn off the petrol and see that all was shipshape. When I entered the house again, and almost as soon as I had shut the door, the queerest thing I can remember happened to me. It was nothing less than this—that the girl, Betsy, came toward me with her face as white as a sheet; and, before I could utter a single word or ask her the ghost of a question, she just slipped headlong through my arms and lay like a dead thing.

Now, this was a nice position to be in and no mistake about it. The girl limp and helpless in my arms, not a soul in the house, me not knowing where to lay hands on a drop of brandy, to say nothing of a glass of water, and, above all, the peculiar feeling that something not over-pleasant must have frightened Betsy, and that it might frighten me before many minutes had passed. Listening intently, I could not at first hear a sound in all the house—but just when I was telling myself not to be a fool, I heard, as plainly as ever I heard anything in my life, a sigh as of some one groaning in pain; and at that I do believe I dropped the girl clean on to the floor and made a dash into the nearest room in a state of mind I should have been ashamed to confess even to my own brother.

What did it mean, who was playing tricks with us, and what was the mystery? I looked round the apartment and made it out to be the dining-room, plainly furnished, well lighted, but as empty of people as Westminster Abbey at twelve o'clock of a Sunday night. A smaller room to the right lay in darkness, but I found the switch and satisfied myself in a moment that no one was hidden there; nor did a search in every nook and cranny near by enlighten me further. What was even worse was the fact that I could now hear the groaning very plainly; and when I had stood a minute, with my heart beating like a steam pump and my eyes half blinded with the shadows and the light, I discovered, just in a flash, that whoever groaned was not in any room of the house, neither in the hall nor upon the staircase, but in the very basket I had just laid down and should have carried to the floor above before many minutes had passed.

I am not going to state here precisely what I thought or did when I made that astonishing discovery, or just what I felt at the moment when I tried to understand its significance. Perhaps I could not remember half that happened even if I tried to do so. My clearest memory is of a dark, silent street, and of me standing there, bare-headed, with a fainting girl in my arms, and a civil old chap with white whiskers asking again and again, "My good fellow, whatever is the matter and what on earth are you doing here?" When I answered him it was to beg him for God's sake to tell me the name of the nearest doctor—and at that I remember he simply pointed to the house opposite and to a brass plate upon its door.

"I am Mr. Harrison, the surgeon," he said quickly; "I am just buying a motor, and so I crossed the road to look at yours. Tell me what has happened and what is the matter with the woman."

I told him as quietly as I could.

"God knows what it is—perhaps murder. The girl heard it and fainted. She'll be all right in a minute if I can lay her down. I never thought any woman weighed half as much. Anyway, she's coming to and that's something—if you could call a policeman, sir."

He was a self-possessed gentleman, I must say, and, looking up and down the street, while I set the girl down on the footboard of the car, he espied the little messenger boy who had helped us to carry the basket into the house and sent him for a policeman. Betsy had opened her eyes by this time, but all she could say had no meaning for me, nor was it any clearer to him. When we had got her across to his surgery and left her there, we returned to the house together, and as we went I tried to tell him just what had happened and how I came to be mixed up in such a strange affair. The story was still half told when we mounted the steps of Bredfield and walked straight up to the basket which had scared the girl out of her wits and left me wondering whether I was awake or dreaming. Now, however, I had no doubt at all about the matter, for whoever was under that lid was struggling pretty wildly to get free, and would have broken the cords in another minute if the doctor had not cut them.

A couple of slashes with a lancet severed the stout rope with which my "bundle" had been tied, and a third cut the bit of string which bound the hasp to the wickerwork. I stepped back instinctively as the gentleman raised the lid, and so, to be honest, did he—the same thought, I am sure, being in both our heads and the belief that our own lives might be in danger. When the truth was revealed, my first impulse was to laugh aloud, my second to set off in my car without a moment's loss of time, and try to lay by the heels the pair of villains who had done this thing.

In a word, I may tell you that the basket contained a young girl, apparently not more than fifteen years of age; that she was dressed in rags, though apparently a lady of condition, and that when we lifted her out it appeared that her reason had gone and that her young life might shortly follow it.

I've been through some strange times in my life; had many a peep into the next world, so to speak; seen men die quick and die slow—but for real right-down astonishment and pity I shall never better that scene in the Boundary Road, St. John's Wood, if I live as long as the patriarchs.

Just picture the brightly lighted hall and the open basket, and this pretty little thing with yellow hair streaming over her shoulders and her bare arms extended as though in entreaty toward the doctor and me, and such cries upon her lips as though we, and not the men who had sent her here, had been her would-be murderers. I tell you that I would have sold my home to save her, and that's no idle word. Unhappily, I could do nothing, and what I would have done the police forbade me to do, for there were three of them in the room before five minutes had passed; and I might be forgiven for saying that half the local force was present inside half an hour.

Well, you know what a policeman is when anything big turns up; how there's a mighty fine note-book about two foot long to be produced, and perhaps a drop of whisky and soda to whet his pencil, and then the questions and the answers and what not—all the time the thief is running hard down the back street and the gold watch is sticking out of his boot.

I answered perhaps a hundred and fifty questions that night, and nobody any the wiser for them. Notes were taken of everything: the time I set out, where my father was born, what they paid me for the job, the address of the garage, Christian name and surname of Abraham Moss—whether I'd had my licence endorsed or kept it clean—until at last, able to stand it no longer, I told the inspector plainly that this wasn't Colney Hatch, and the sooner he understood as much the better.

"Here's my car and there's the street," said I; "will you drive to Richmond Road and see the house for yourself or will you not? I tell you there were two of them, and one may be there now. You can prove it for yourself or let it go, as you like. But don't say it wasn't talked about or I shall know how to contradict you."

He came down to ground at this and consented to go with me. We were back again in the Richmond Road inside a quarter of an hour and knocking at the door of the house where I had picked the basket up about two minutes later. A very old woman opened to us this time, and answered very civilly that the two strange gentlemen had left for the Continent by the evening train, and she had no idea if they would return or no. They had always paid her regularly, she said, though not often at home; while as for their room, we could examine that with pleasure. The more amazing confession came after, for when she was pressed to tell us something about the young lady, she declared stoutly that she had never seen one, and that the Messrs. Picton—for so she called her lodgers—kept no female company, and very rarely had asked even a gentleman to their rooms.

The inspector listened to all she had to say and then made a formal search of the house. It would be waste of time to insist that he found nothing—not so much as a scrap of paper or an empty collar-box to enlighten him; but he gave strict orders that no one was to enter the men's room upon any pretext whatsoever; and when he had locked it and pocketed the key, he made me drive him back to the Boundary Road and then up to the hospital at Hampstead, to which the little girl had been carried and where she was then lying. Naturally I had the entrêe as well as he—for there were three or four swagger men from Scotland Yard on the carpet by this time, and all of them mighty anxious to make my acquaintance. From these I learned that the child was still incoherent in her talk, and utterly unable to remember who she was or whence she had come. Fright had paralysed her faculties. She might have been born yesterday for all she knew about it.

For my part, I had a strong desire to talk to the girl myself and put a few questions which had come into my head while we were waiting; but the police would have none of this, and the most they would permit me to do was to look at her from the far end of the ward, which I did for a long time, watching her face very closely, and wondering how beautiful it was.

When they sent me away at last I returned to the garage down West, and so to my bed, but not to sleep. It must have been three o'clock of the morning by this time, and I lay until I heard some noisy church-clock striking seven, when I determined to stop there tossing about no longer, but to get up and read the morning papers. Few of them, however, had more than a brief paragraph announcing the fact, and we had to wait for the "evenings" to discover the real sensation. My word, how thick they laid it on—and what a hero they made of me. I must have been interviewed a dozen times that day, and when the following morning's papers came, I read for the first time that a reward of five hundred pounds had been offered for the capture of the perpetrators of this outrage, and that it would be paid by the Editor of the Daily Herald on the day that the mystery was solved.

Of course, there were many theories. Some believed it to be a case of abduction pure and simple, some of revenge; a few recommended the doctors to follow the poison clue and to ascertain if the child had been drugged before she was put into the basket.

Speaking for myself, I had an idea in my head, which I didn't mention even to Betsy Chambers, whom it was necessary for me to see pretty often about that time, and generally of evenings. This idea, I suppose, would have knocked the Scotland Yard braves silly with laughing; but I had no fancy to share five hundred with them—more especially since they took seven fifteen off me at Kingston last Petty Sessions—so I just kept a quiet tongue in my head and mentioned the matter to nobody. Perhaps it was unfortunate I did not; I can't tell you more than this, that the next ten days found me walking about Soho as though I had a fancy to buy up the neighbourhood, and that on the eleventh day precisely I found what I wanted—found it by what I might have called a turn of Providence if I didn't know now it was something very different.

I should remind you hereabouts that the case was still the rage of the town, though hope of bringing the would-be assassins to justice had almost been abandoned.

The little girl now began to remember her past in a dim sort of way, and had told the police that she lived in a foreign country by the sea—which was not the same as saying Southend-on-the-Mud by a long way. Her father she recollected distinctly, and cried out for him very often in her sleep. She did not seem to think she had a mother, and of what happened in the Richmond Road her mind recalled nothing. I had seen her twice; but she was so frightened when I went near her that the police forbade me to go at all—and I do believe, upon my solemn word, that if it hadn't been for the witnesses they would have said I had something to do with the job myself.

This, be sure, didn't trouble me at all. What was in my mind was the five hundred sterling offered by the Daily Herald for the solution of the mystery; and that sum I did not lose sight of night or day. To win it I must discover the Yankee with the voice like a saw-mill, and the little cove with the saucer eyes, and for these, upon an instinct which I can hardly account for even to myself (save to say it was connected with three days I spent in Paris eight months ago) I hunted Soho for eleven days as other men hunt big game in Africa. And, will you believe it, when I discovered one of them at last, it was not by my eyes, but by his, for he spotted me at the very top of Wardour Street, and, coming across the road, he slapped me on the shoulder, just as though I had been his only brother let loose on society for the especial purpose of shaking him by the hand.

"Why," says he, "I guess it's the coachman."

"Coachman be d——d," says I; "hasn't Pentonville taught you no better manners than that? You be careful," says I, "or they'll be cancelling your ticket-of-leave——"

He wasn't to be affronted, for he continued to treat me as though he loved me and life had been a misery since we lost each other.

"Say," cried he, "you got through with the basket all right. Well, see here, now; do you want to get that five hundred, Britten, or do you not? I'll play the White Man with you—do you want to get it?"

"Oh," cried I, "if it's a matter of five hundred being put in the cloak-room because there isn't a label on it——"

"Then come along," he rejoined, and, taking me by the arm, he led me along the street, turned sharp round to the right into a place that looked like a disused coach-house; and before I could wink my eye, he dragged me through a door into a room beyond, and then burst out laughing fit to split.

"Britten," says he, "you're fairly done down. I've got the cinch on you, Britten. Don't you perceive that same?"

Well, of all the fools! My head spun with the thought; not at first the thought of fear, mind you, though fear followed right enough, but just with the irony of it all, and the rightdown lunacy which sent me into this trap as a fly goes into a spider's web. And this man would suck me dry; I hadn't a doubt of it; a word might cost me my life.

"Well," I rejoined, knowing that my safety depended upon my wits, "and what if I am? Do you suppose I came here without letting Inspector Melton know where I was coming? You'd better think it out, old chap. There may be two at the corner and both on the wrong side. Don't you make no mistake."

He laughed very quietly, and as though to make his own words good he put up the shutters on the only window the miserable den of a place possessed. We were in a kind of twilight now, in a miserably furnished shanty, with the paper peeling off the walls and the fire-grate all rusted and the very boards broken beneath our feet. And I believed he had a pistol in his pocket, and that he would use it if I so much as lifted my hand.

"Oh," says he presently, and in a mocking tone which ran down my back like cold water from a spout. "Oh, you're a brave boy, Britten, and when you spread yourself about the tecs, I like you. Now, see here, did I try to murder that girl or did I not? Fair question and fair answer. Am I the man the police are looking for, or is it another?"

I answered him straight out.

"The pair of you are in it. You know that well enough—and the reward is five hundred, to say nothing of what the police are offering."

"You mean to have that reward, Britten."

"If I can get it fairly, yes."

"As good as to say you'll walk straight out of here and give me up?"

"Unless you can tell me you didn't do it."

He swung round on his heel and looked at me as savage as a devil out of hell.

"I did it, Britten—Barney, my mate, had nothing to do with it. Didn't you see him sweat the night you picked us up? Barney's a tender-foot at this game; he'll never cut a figure in the 'Calendar,' why, not if he lives to be a chimpanzee in the human menagerie. Barney ought to be holding forth in the tabernacle round the corner. Him do it—why, he couldn't kill a calf."

Well, I think I sat back and shuddered at this; anyway, an awful feeling of horror came upon me, both at the man's word and at the thought of my lonely situation, and of what must come afterwards. All the calculations seemed against me. I am a strong man, and would have stood up to this Yankee, fist to fist, for any sum you care to name; but the pistol in his pocket, and the certainty that he would use it upon any provocation, held me to my seat as though I were glued there. And thus for five whole minutes, an eternity of time to me, I watched him pace up and down the room, gloating upon his horrid work, and wondering when my turn would come.

"Britten," he said presently—and his voice had changed, I thought—"Britten, would you like a whisky and soda?"

"If it's only whisky and soda——"

"What! You think I'm going to doctor it—same as I did Mabel's?"

"I don't know to what you refer—but something of the kind was in my head."

It amused him finely—and I must say again that his attitude all through was that of a man who could hardly keep from laughing whatever he did, so that I came to think he must be little short of a raving maniac, and that perhaps the Court would find him such.

"Oh," says he, "don't you fear, Britten, I shan't treat you that way—you may drink my whisky all right, a barrelful if you can. When I want to deal with you, Britten, it will be another way altogether—cash, my boy; have you any objection to a little cash?"

I opened my eyes wide, telling myself, for the second time, that he was as certainly mad as any March hare in the picture-books; but I said nothing, for he had turned to a little wooden cupboard near the fireplace, and before he spoke again he set a bottle of whisky, a syphon, and two tumblers on the table, and poured out a stiffish dose for himself and its fellow for me. When I had watched him drink it, and not before, I followed suit, and never did a man want a whisky and soda as badly.

"Your health," says he—I believe I wished him the same. "And little Mabel Bellamy's——"

I put the glass down on the table with a bang.

"Good God!" said I, "not Mabel Bellamy that did the disappearing trick at the Folies Bergères in Paris two years ago?"

"The same," says he.

"And you are telling me——"

"That she was a very fine actress. Do you deny it, Mr. Britten?"

I rose and buttoned my coat—but the black look was in his eyes again.

"Britten," says he, "not in so much of a hurry, if you please. I am going round to the Daily Herald this afternoon to get that five hundred. You will sit here until I return, when I shall pay you fifty of the best. Is it a bargain, Britten—have we the right to the money or have you?"

I thought upon it for a moment and could not deny the justice of it.

"Do you mean to say you did it for an advertisement?" I cried.

"The very same," says he, "and this night, Mabel's fond papa, the gentleman with the big eyes, Britten, will go to Hampstead and take his long-lost daughter to his breast. She makes her first appearance at the Casino Theatre to-morrow night, Britten——"

I rose and shook him by the hand.

"Fifty of the best," said I, "and I'll wait for them here."

Well, I must say it was a tidy good notion, first for the pair of them to work a trick like that on the public just for the sake of letting all the world know that Mabel Bellamy was to disappear from a basket at the Casino Theatre; and secondly, dropping on the Daily Herald for five hundred of the best—and getting it, too, before the story got wind.

You see, the Herald lost no money, for they had a fine scoop all to their little selves, while the other papers gnashed their teeth and looked on. Nor was the whole truth told by a long way, but a garbled version about foreign coves who worked the business and bolted, and a doting father who never consented to it—and such a hash-up and hocus-pocus as would have made a pig laugh.

Whether, however, the public really took it all, or whether it resented the manner of the play, is not for me to say.

Sentiment is, after all, a very fine thing, as I told Betsy Chambers the night I gave her the anchor brooch and asked her to wear it for auld lang syne, to say nothing of the good time we had when I took her to Maidenhead in old Moss's car and pretended I was broken down at Reading with a dot-and-go-one accumulator. Of course, Moss weighed in with an interview. I wonder the sight of his ugly old mug didn't shrivel the paper it was printed on.

Anyway me and Betsy—but that's another story, and so, perhaps, I had better conclude.

VI

THE COUNTESS

To begin with, I suppose, it would be as well to tell you her name, but I only saw it once in the address-book at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, and then I couldn't have written it down for myself—no, not if a man had offered me five of the best for doing so.

You see, she gave it out that she came from foreign parts, and her husband, when she remembered that she'd got one, was supposed to be a Hungarian grandee with a name fit to crack walnuts, and a moustache like an antelope's horns set over a firegrate to speak of her ancestors. Had I been offered two guesses, I would have said that she came from New York City and that her name was Mary. But who am I to contradict a pretty woman in trouble, and what was the matter with Maria Louise Theresa, and all the rest of it, as she set it down in the visitors' book at the hotel?

I'd been over to Paris on a job with a big French car, and worked there a little while for James D. Higgs, the American tin-plate maker, who was making things shine at the Ritz Hotel, and had a Panhard almost big enough to take the chorus to Armenonville—which he did by sections, showing neither fear nor favour, and being wonderful domesticated in his tastes.

When James was overtaken by the domestic emotions, and thought he would return to Pittsburg to his sorrowing wife and children, he handed me over to the Countess, saying that she was a particular friend of his, and that if her ancestors didn't sail with the Conqueror it was probably because they had an appointment at the Moulin Rouge and were too gentlemanly to break it—which was his way of tipping me the wink; and "Britten, my boy," says he, "keep her out of mischief, for you are all she has got in this wicked world."

Well, it was an eye-opener, I must say; for I hadn't seen her for more than two minutes together, and when we did meet, I found her to be just a jolly little American chassis, slim and shapely, and as full of "go" as a schoolgirl on a roundabout. Her idea, she told me, was to drive a Delahaye car she had hired, from Paris to Monte Carlo, and there to meet her husband with the jaw-cracking name; whom, she assured me, with the look of an angel in the blue picture, she hadn't seen for more than two years.

"Two years, Britten—sure and certain. Now what do you think of that?"

"It would depend upon your husband, madame," said I; upon which she laughed so loud they must have heard her in the garden below.

"Why, to be sure," says she, "you've got there first time. It does depend upon the husband, and mine is the kindest, gentlest, most foolish creature that ever was in this world. So, you see, I am determined not to be kept from him any longer."

"Then, madame," said I, "we had better start at once."

I thought that she hesitated, could have sworn that she was about to admit me further into her confidence; but I suppose she considered the time unsuited; and after asking me a few questions about the car, and whether I knew the road and was a careful driver, she gave me instructions to be at the hotel at nine o'clock on the following morning. So away I went, telling myself that the world was a funny place, and wondering what Herr Joseph, the jaw-cracker, would have to say to his good lady when she did turn up at Montey and laid her new beehive hat upon his doting bosom.

This was no business of mine. I am a motor-driver, and two pound ten on Saturday is my abiding anxiety. Give me my wages regular, and the class of passenger who feels for the driver's palm at the journey's end, and I'll ask nothing more of Providence. So on the following morning, at nine sharp, I drove the big Delahaye round to the Ritz, and by a quarter past her ladyship was aboard and we were making for Dijon and the coast.

No motorist who knows anything of the game will ask me to describe this journey, or to tell him just where he should stop because of the dead 'uns of five hundred years ago, or where he should hurry on because of the livestock of to-day. I had a fine car under me, a pretty woman in the tonneau, a May-day to put life into me, and a road so fine that a man might dream of it in his sleep. And if that's not what the schoolmaster calls Eldorado, then I'll send him a halfpenny card to find out just what is.

So let it suffice to say that we went at our leisure—slept at Dijon and at Lyons, were one night at Avignon, and two nights later at Nice. If there was anything to remark during the journey, it was Madame's growing anxiety as we approached the Mediterranean, and the number of telegrams she sent to her friends whenever we chanced to halt—even in the meanest villages.

The telegrams I had the pleasure to read more than once as I handed them over the counter; but those that were in German were no good to me, and those that were in French I could but half decipher. None the less, I got the impression that she was in a state of much distress and perplexity, and that all her messages were to one end—namely, that she should have the right to go somewhere at present forbidden her, and that the Baron Albert, whoever he might be, should be interviewed on her behalf and persuaded that she was a lady of all the virtues.

A final telegram to an English gentleman at Vienna capped all, and was not to be misunderstood. It simply said, "I shall publish the story if they persevere." And that seemed to me an ugly threat to come from so pretty a sender, though of its meaning I had no more knowledge than the dead.

Perhaps you will say that I was a poor sort to have been reading her telegrams at all; that it didn't concern me; and that I was paid to hold my tongue. Well, that is true enough, and Madame had little to complain of on such a score, I must say. To all and sundry who questioned me at the hotels, I just said she was the wife of a Hungarian nobleman, and that she travelled for her pleasure. When we arrived at Nice, and an impertinent policeman got me into a corner, so to speak, and tried to put me through the catechism, I simply said, "No speakee Frenchee—Mistress Americano," and at that he shook his head and wrote it down in a note-book about as large as a grocer's ledger. But I plainly perceived that something more than mere police curiosity accounted for all this cross-examination; and when Madame sent for me to her private sitting-room that night, I guessed immediately that something was up, and that I was about to learn the nature of it.

I shall always remember the occasion, as beautiful a night of a Southern summer as a man could hap upon. Still and starry, the sea without a ripple; the ships like black shapes against an azure sky; the lights of the houses shining upon the moonlit gardens; the music of the bands; the gay talk of the merry people—oh, who would go northward ho! if Providence set him down on such a spot as this? And upon it all was the picture of Madame herself—of that lady of the gazelle's eyes and the milk-white skin, as she invited me into her sitting-room and asked me to sit down while she talked.

You could not have matched her for beauty in Nice; I doubt if you could have done it nearer than Paris and the Ritz. Dressed in a lot of fluffy stuff, with a pink satin skirt, and arms bare to the shoulders and a chain of diamonds about her neck—dressed like this, and so sweet and gracious in her manner, talking to me just as though she had known me from infancy, and asking me, Lal Britten, to help her—why, you bet I said "Yes," and said it so plainly that even she could not mistake me.

"Why, Britten," says she, "do you know what has happened to-day?"

"Couldn't guess it if I tried, madame," said I.

"Well, then, I must tell you: they won't let me go to Monte Carlo, Britten. They say the Emperor forbids it."

"But, madame, is there any need to ask the old gentleman's permission? Aren't you an American citizen?"

She laughed at my idea of it, and asked me if I would like a glass of port wine, which I did to oblige her; while she took another as though she liked it, which I have no reason to suppose she did not.

"You see, Britten," she said, presently, "a woman is of her husband's nationality, and so, of course, I am a Hungarian. That is why the Emperor has the power to say that I must not be admitted to Monte Carlo just at the moment when my dear husband is waiting for me there. Now, don't you think it is very hard upon us both?"

"It's very hard on him, madame, seeing you are in the case. I should want to know him before I said the same thing for you, asking your pardon for the liberty."

She took no notice of this, but casting up her eyes to heaven—and at that game Miss Sarah Bernhardt out of Paris couldn't beat her—she exclaimed:

"Oh, my poor Joseph, whatever will he think of me? I dare not contemplate it, Britten—I really dare not."

"Then I should leave it alone, madame. Is there no way of getting this decision altered?"

"None that I can think of, unless——"

"Unless what, madame?"

She tapped the table with her pretty fingers, and poured me out a second glass of port wine.

"Unless the mountain will come to Mahomet—but I guess you don't know what that means, Britten, now do you?"

She screwed her lips up to the kissing point with this, and looked at me so tenderly that I began to feel nervous—upon my word I did.

"Do you mean that your husband must come here, madame?"

"Of course I mean it, Britten. You must fetch him—by a trick. Now wouldn't that be splendid—say, wouldn't it be fine? If we could outwit them—if we could make the Emperor look foolish!"

I rubbed my chin and thought about it. There isn't much modesty in my profession, but the idea of getting up against a policeman so far from my humble home somehow put the brake on, and I found myself misfiring like one o'clock in spite of her pretty eyes and her red lips, and her "take me in your arms and kiss me" look. The Croydon lot are bad enough, but as for the beaks at Montey—well, I've heard tales of them and to spare.

"It would be fine, madame, if we could do it," said I at last; "but between talking of it here in this hotel and crossing the frontier——"

"Oh," she cried, interrupting me almost angrily—and she has the devil of a temper—"oh, there's no difficulty, Britten. Just drive to the Hermitage after my husband has dined to-morrow night, and say that if he wants the news of Madame Clara, you can take him where he will get it. Don't you see, Clara is one of my pet names. He'll understand in a moment, and you can drive him to this hotel. Are you afraid to do that, Britten?"

Of course I wasn't afraid, and she knew it. It was nothing to me anyway, and I could always plead that I was her servant and an Englishman, and didn't care a damn for this particular Emperor or any other. None the less, if she hadn't smiled upon me as she did at that particular moment—smiled like a daffy-down-dilly in April, and squeezed my hand as soft as June roses, which the same appeared to be done by accident, I might have left it alone, after all. As it was, I had set off at seven o'clock on the following evening, and at a quarter past nine I was asking at the Hermitage for Count Joseph, just as full of the story I had to tell as a history-book of kings.

A black and white maître d'hôtel, picked out with gold, replied to this, and after talking to half a dozen waiters and sending for another chap with a shirt-front like a Mercedes bonnet, they directed me to a little hotel down by Monaco; and there the head waiter received me quite affably, and said, "Certainly, the gentleman was at home." When I had given my name, but not my business, I was ushered up, perhaps after an interval of ten minutes, to a sitting-room on the first floor, and there I found myself face to face with a fat, red-faced man in evening dress; and if ever there was a martinet down Montey way, this fine gentleman was that same. He was fat, I say, and forty—but to write that he was fair would be impossible, for he hadn't more than about half a dozen hairs on his head, and those had drifted down his neck to get out of the wind. When I came in he appeared to be sipping Cognac out of a long green bottle, and to be reading private papers just as fast as he could get through them, but he looked up presently, and a pair of wickeder eyes I do not want to see.

"Who sent you here?" he asked.

"A lady," said I.

"Her name?"

"Madame Clara."

He turned and snuffed the wick of a candle standing on the table by his side. From his manner I did not think him quite sober, but he appeared to pull himself together by-and-by, and then he exclaimed:

"Repeat your message."

"I am to say that if you wish for news of Madame Clara, I can take you where you will get it."

Well, I thought that he smiled, though I cannot be quite sure of that. Presently, however, he stood up without a word, and, going into his bedroom, he brought a heavy fur coat and cap into the sitting-room, and motioned me to help him on with them. When that was done, he opened the door and invited me to precede him down the corridor.

"I will see the lady," he said—and that was all. We were in the car two minutes afterwards, making for Nice on the "fourth," and not a soul to interfere with us or to do more than take a glance at our papers as we passed the stations. Never had there been a lighter job; never had a man helped a woman so easily.

I thought about all this, be sure, as we drew near Nice and the end of our game appeared to be at hand. The old women tell us not to count our chickens before they are hatched, and that's a thing I am not in the habit of doing; but the more I reflected upon it, the better pleased did I feel with myself, and the greater was my wonder at the lady's tastes. That such a pretty little woman, such a gay soul, such a good judge of men—for she was a judge, I'll swear—that she should have ever been in love with this sack of lard I was driving to Nice—well, that did astonish me beyond measure; though it should not have done so, knowing women as I do, and seeing how old Father Time does stick his dirty fingers on our idols and make banshees of the best of them.

I say that I was astonished, but such a feeling soon gave place to others; and when I brought up my car with a dash to the door of the hotel, and the gold-laced porter helped the fat old gentleman out, curiosity took the place of wonder. I became as anxious as a parlourmaid at a keyhole to know what Madame would have to say to this twenty-stone husband, and, what particular terms of endearment he would choose for his reply. Certainly if pleasurable anticipation is to be denoted by smiles, he found no fault with his present situation, for he grinned like a gorilla when he got down, and, nodding to me quite affably, he asked:

"Upon which floor is Madame Clara staying, did you say?"

"The third floor—number 113."

"Ah," says he, adjusting his glasses and turning round to go in, "that is an unlucky number, my friend," and without another word he entered the hotel and left me there.

Of course, I didn't expect him to talk to me, was not looking for a tip from Madame's own husband, but I had expected a question or two; and when he had departed the porter and I stopped there gossiping a bit, for it was likely that the car might be wanted again that night—and, to be truthful, I more than half hoped that Madame would send for me.

"What's up?" asks the porter—he passes for a foreigner, but I happen to know he was born just off Soho. "What's up, matey?"

"Why," says I, "that's just what I'd like to know myself. Can't you tell the chambermaid at 113 to find out?"

"The maid's off. Is that old cove licensed?"

"All in order at Scotland Yard," says I. "He's took out a license to drive, and his papers are passed. That's my missis' husband."

"Oh," he remarked, in a dreamy kind of way, "which one?"

"Why, the gentleman who just went in."

"Poor soul!" says he, in a most aggravating manner, "how fast she do lose 'em. I wonder who pays for the headstones?"

"Do you know her?" asked I, for his words took me aback.

He shook his head at this, and then scratched it as though he were trying to think.

"Larst time," he said presently, "larst time she dropped one or two at Cannes, I'm thinking—— But, Lord love me, what's that?"

He stepped back on the pavement and looked up to the window of the room 113. I had heard the shindy as well as he—a regular scream, as though a woman was mad in her tantrums, and upon that a crash of glass and silence—while the porter and me, we just stared at one another.

"Votes for women!" says he, presently, and in so droll a way that I had to laugh in spite of myself; but before I could answer him, what do you think? Why, out come the old gentleman, just as calm and smiling as he had been ten minutes ago.

"You will drive me back to Monaco," he began. I asked him by whose orders; but at that he looked like a devil incarnate, and spoke so loud that I was right down frightened of him.

"You will drive me back to Monaco or spend the night in prison!" he shouted. "Now, which do you prefer?"

"Oh," says I, "in you get!" And in he did get, as I'm a Dutchman, and I drove him back to the hotel at Monaco—which was about the hour of one in the morning, and no mistake at all. When he got out at last, no babe in frocks could have looked more innocent, and he just handed me up a couple of louis, like a father blessing his only son.

"You drive very well, my lad. Where did you learn?"

"On a good car, sir. Henri Fourtnier taught me about the time of the second Gordon Bennett. But I don't suppose you remember that."

"Certainly I remember it. The late Count Zborowski was one of my friends. Let me give you a little piece of advice. It is better to drive for a gentleman than a lady."

"I beg your pardon, sir?"

But he waved his hand with a flourish, and crying, "A bonny arntarndure," or something of that kind, he disappeared into his hotel and left me to think what I liked. And a lot I did think as I drove back to Nice, I do assure you—for a rummier game I had never been engaged in, and that's the truth, upon my word and honour.

It was daylight when I reached the garage, and out of the question, of course, to think of seeing Madame. Speaking for myself, I was too dog-tired to ask if she wanted me or not; and going up to my bedroom, I must have slept till nine o'clock without lifting an eyelid. At that hour the boots waked me in a deuce of a stew, telling me that Madame must see me without a moment's loss of time. I dressed anyhow and went down to her. Poor little woman, what a state she was in! I don't think I ever saw a sorrier picture in all my life.

No fluffy stuff and fine pink satin now, but a shabby old morning gown and her hair anyhow upon her shoulders, and in her eyes the look of a woman who has been hunted and does not know where on God's earth she is going to find a habitation. I've seen it twice in my life, and I never want to see it again—for what man with a heart would wish to do so?

"Britten," she says, almost like a play-actress on the stage of a theatre, "Britten, do you know what happened last night?"

"Well," says I, "for that matter lots of things happened; but if you're speaking of the gentleman, your husband——"

"My husband!"—you should have heard her laugh; it was just like one of the animals at the Zoo—"my husband! That wasn't my husband! That was the Baron Albert—the man I dread more than any one in the world. How could you make such a mistake, Britten?"

I shook my head.

"Madame," says I, "I'm very sorry, but I took the first one that came along and answered to the name. It must have been the head waiter's fault."

She clenched her hands and began to step up and down the room, wild with perplexity.

"It was all planned, Britten—all planned. They knew that I should send for Count Joseph, and this villain came from Vienna to thwart me. He must have bribed the servants at the hotel. And now, what do you say to it? I am to be banished from France—he swears it. They have written to Paris, and the decree may come at any moment. I am to be banished, Britten—driven out like a common criminal! Oh, what shall I do? My God, what shall I do?"

That was a question I couldn't answer, but it did seem a wicked thing to treat a woman so, and I wasn't ashamed to admit it.

"Is there any law in France that can turn you out, madame?" I asked. She answered that quickly enough.

"Certainly there is, Britten. I know all about it. They can turn me out at twenty-four hours' notice."

"Why not go to the American Consulate, madame?"

"Oh, you don't understand. If my husband were but here! Oh, they would not insult me then—even if you were my husband, Britten."

Upon my life and soul, I believe that she meant it. There was a look in her eyes as she stood before me which, unless I'm the biggest fool in Christendom, told me what was what plainly enough. A word, and I could have taken that fine lady in my arms. I would swear to it.

And what forbade me, you ask? Well, perhaps I'd heard a smash of glass last night, and perhaps I hadn't; but I do believe it was that porter's foolish remark about "votes for women" which put me off more than anything else. So I drew back a step and answered her with more respect than ever.

"I'll see that nobody insults you while I am your servant, madame. If I may make a suggestion, I would advise you to leave this town."

She looked at me thoughtfully.

"And where should I go, Britten?"

"Back to Paris, madame—they won't interfere with you there."

"But my husband—my dear husband?"

I shrugged my shoulders.

"Perhaps Mahomet will come to the—er—em—to you, madame."

It was her turn to laugh; but I soon learned that my suggestion was no good to her, and for a very simple reason.

"Ah," she said, "men are strange creatures, Britten. When we will, they will not; and when we will not, why, then they give us jewellery. I can't go back to Paris. If I do, a police officer goes with me."

"Take him on the box and call him a footman—unless you prefer to make for London right away, madame."

She was emphatic about this.

"I can't, Britten! I must stay in Paris. It is my last chance of seeing Count Joseph before he returns to Vienna for the summer. Oh, is there no way? Is it quite impossible?"

I scratched my head. Something had been inside it for some minutes.

"Would you care to sit on the box beside me, madame?"

She was all ears at this.

"Of course I wouldn't mind. Have I not myself driven a car? Count Mendez taught me at Cannes last year."

"Could you drive this car a little way on the road to Italy?"

"Why, certainly I could. But how would that help us?"

"Supposing," said I, "that you didn't mind my old mackintosh, madame. I've got that, and a leather cap I keep for the cold weather. If you would put them on and sit beside me, I think we might do it. You can drive if there's any necessity to do so."

She clapped her hands so loud that I thought they would hear us on the Promenade des Anglais below.

"I'll do it, Britten—as I'm a living woman I'll do it. Go and bring your clothes. We may not have an hour to spare. I'll cheat them yet, Britten. Oh, you clever man—you clever man to have thought of it."

"We might start at dusk, madame. Pay your bill, and give it out that we are going into Italy this afternoon. You needn't come back. I'll find you a private room next door to the garage, where you can change, and we can set off just like two drivers on the box-seat, and nobody a penny the wiser. When you get to Paris I can take you to a little hotel——"

She was like a child about it.

"Why, of all the clever men! You shall look after me in Paris. I won't forget you, Britten, and I'm rich enough for anything—at present. You shall stop with me until Count Joseph comes——"

I thought to myself that it would be an over-long engagement in that case; but there was no call to say anything of the kind to her, and stopping only to repeat my directions, I went round to the garage and made ready. If Madame herself was excited at the prospect of giving the fat man the go-by, I was no less; and I assure you that no boy's game I had ever played excited me half as much. Best of all was the thought that our quickness would forestall them; and if the authorities did decide to expel her, we should be on the road to Paris long before the edict arrived.

As to what might happen afterwards, I was indifferent; for Paris is the same as London to a proper motor-man, and I am just as much at home in the Champs Elysêes as in Regent Street. So I left that to fortune, and, setting about the plan, I had my things packed and the car made ready under an hour, and at four o'clock sharp that afternoon I picked up Madame and her trunks at the door of the hotel and set off boldly as though to drive her to the Italian frontier. But I turned back before we had gone a mile, and making straight for the little Italian hotel next door to the garage, I smuggled her in without a soul being the wiser, and out again as cleverly just after dusk. She was dressed then just as I have told you—mackintosh up to her ears and a flat leather cap, suiting her pretty face to perfection. But any fool could have seen she was a woman twenty yards away; and I began to ask which was the bigger idiot—me for making the suggestion, or she for taking it? It was too late, however, to think of that, and trusting that good luck might pull us through, perhaps looking on the whole affair as one which was pretty near its end—and that no good end—I let the car go and made straight for Brignoles.

Quite what apprehension of danger was in her head or mine I really don't know. Sometimes I think that she had a silly notion of what the French prefect might have done to her, exaggerating, as women will, the real situation, and dreadfully frightened of "foreigners."

For myself, I wanted to get her back to Paris in spite of the attempt to stop us; perhaps I wanted to be even with the red-faced man, who had ordered me about last night; but whichever way it was, I could have laughed fit to split every time I looked at that odd little bundle by my side and thought of it as it was last night, all dressed in flummery and rustling like the leaves. Nevertheless, I made no mention of it; and, as much to her surprise as mine, we passed through Frejus without any one stopping us, and drove right through the night without let or hindrance. Not until dawn did I begin to ask myself some questions—and they were awkward ones. What the devil was I going to do with her in the towns? Why had I never thought of it? She was wearing my long mackintosh, to be sure; but who would fail to recognise her, and what would the talk be like?

A hundred difficulties, not one of which I had had the brains to think of last night, kept popping up like midgets in a puppet-show; and, as though to crown them all, bang went the near-side back tyre at that very moment, and there we were by the roadside, at five in the morning, in as desolate a place as you want to find, and not the sign of house or village wherever the eye might turn.

Now Madame had been nearly asleep upon my shoulder when this happened, but she woke up at the report and looked up all about her as though she had been dreaming.

"Where are we, Britten?" she asked. "What has happened to us?"

"Tyre gone, madame. I must trouble you to get down."

She woke up at this, and got out immediately. I could see that she was more clear-headed than she had been last night, if not less frightened.

"This was a very foolish thing to do, Britten. We are sure to be followed."

"That's as it may be, madame. I fear it's too late to think of it now. My business is to get this tyre fixed up."

"Will it take you very long, Britten?"

"Thirty minutes ordinary. But it's a new cover and stiff—I'll say forty."

"Then I'll see to the breakfast. Wasn't it clever of me to think of it? I've brought a Thermos and a basket. We'll have breakfast in the little wood on the hillside. If no one follows us, I can be myself again at Aix, and we shall get to Paris, after all. But oh, Britten, I must look an object in your clothes. Why ever did you ask me to wear them?"

I made a dry answer. A man wrestling with a 935 by 135 cover isn't exactly in the mood to compliment a woman on her frippery or talk about the mountains. And I'm no more than human, all said and done, and the sight of the food she took out of the basket made me feel well-nigh desperate. So I turned my back upon her, and she went off to the copse to prepare breakfast as she had promised. Not five minutes afterwards I heard the hum of another car in the distance, and, looking up from my wheel, I saw a great red Mercedes coming down the hillside like a racer at Brooklands.

I knew that we were in for it; instinct told me immediately that we had been followed from Frejus or Nice, and that danger was aboard that flyer, and would be up with us in less than two minutes. What to do, whether to shout to Madame to run and hide herself—to do that or just go on with my work as though nothing had happened was a problem to make a man half silly. But in the end I held on tenaciously, and when the big car drew up beside me, I merely looked up and nodded to the driver as though to signal to him that all was well.

"Bon jour," says he.

"Morning," says I.

"Vous-êtes en panne, mon ami?"

"Hit it first time," says I—for those words are understood by every motor-man who's been in the Riviera—"in the pan and the grease together. Where are you for?"

"Brignoles et Paris. Mais où donc est Madame?"

I looked up, my heart beating fast, and took a peep into his tonneau. The red-faced man was there right enough, but as fast asleep as a parson over his empty port-wine glass. Could I persuade this bonny Frenchman to get on with his job, we were half out of the wood sure and certain. But could I? Lord, how my hands shook when I replied:

"Madame est allé dans le train—Paree—Calais—moi je suis seul"—which was rather good, I thought, though that was not the time to say so.

Well, it seemed successful enough. The Frenchee took a look to the right and a look to the left of him, opened his throttle as though to let in his clutch and closed it again, took off his side brake, and then, just when I was pluming myself that we were through, what do you think the fool does? Why, turns deliberately round and wakes the red-faced Baron.

What passed between them I don't pretend to say, for the French went to and fro like lightning between summer clouds. But of this I am certain: that there never was such a devilish smile as the old Baron turned on me when he got down from the tonneau and took a swift survey of the scene as though sure already of his quarry.

"Ah," he cried, "here is our faithful friend once more. Good-day, Mr. Britten. I hope I see you well?"

"You see me next door to the devil," said I—for out here on the mountain side I didn't care a dump for him. Bluff, however, went for nothing that morning. I had met my match, and I knew it.

"Britten," says he, taking a big cigar from a case and lighting it with provoking deliberation. "Shall we make a truce, Britten?"

"Make what you like," says I. "This car has got to get to Paris to fetch my mistress. If a truce will do it, I'm taking some, right here."

He smiled again, but so softly that I could have hit him.

"Where is she hiding, Britten?" he asked, almost in a whisper. "Where has that very pretty lady chosen to conceal her charms? Come, tell me, my lad, and I'll give you five louis. What is the good of being so foolish?"

I didn't answer a word, and he took another look all round the hills. Luckily, if there was one coppice, there were twenty in that gorge, and when I saw him walking away to the wrong one, I thought I should burst out laughing on the spot. That, I am glad to say, I did not do; but calmly going on with my work, I had the new cover in presently and was ready to make a start. From that moment the drollery of the situation—for it was droll, as I live—began in dead earnest, and lasted right through a hot summer's day—until dusk came down, in fact, and the issue was over for good and all.

Can't you imagine just what happened, and see the irony of it all? Depict a great open chasm between the hills, little copses of pines everywhere, and more than one thicket; a white road winding through the valley, and two cars stuck up on that same.

Say that there was a fat Baron trotting to and fro like a dog hunting for rabbits; put down two tired and hungry chauffeurs, famished for want of meat and cursing their fate; do this, and add that they swore at both the sexes indifferently, and you'll have the thing to a tick. But I assure you that it's pleasanter to read about than to suffer; and any driver would admit as much.

Good Lord, what a day it was! The fat Baron, I should tell you, did not give up the hunt until near twelve o'clock; but when he had searched every thicket within a mile or more, he came back to us and deliberately made himself comfortable inside his car. As for me, I did not dare to move a step either way. If I had gone on, it would have been to have left Madame in the woods; while if I stayed, he stayed—and there you had it. And this game went on till dusk, mind you, and would have gone on longer but for the instinct which came to me quite suddenly like a thought dropped from the skies: that her ladyship had given us both the slip, after all, and would be already where the Baron Albert could not find her. This idea growing to an unalterable conviction decided me at last. I started my engine, mounted my box-seat, and without a word to either of them drove straight away to Brignoles—thence, without a question from any one, to Paris and my master.